Final Edmonton track layout

[Dov]

Thanks to 'Padre' from CCF:

[luke]

Cool. Seems slower than the proposed layout. Was it that turn 7 was tightened!?

Roll on July 17th!

Also check out the Edmonton website

[Silk Cut Jaguar]

Looks pretty good I have too say, more than a couple of over taking spots by the looks of it.

[Mosport67]

Remind me how long the track is.

Looks very similar to Cleveland around the front. It should make for an interesting first turn.

[JohnSSC]

Yes, very similar to Cleveland (and that is not a bad thing). I wonder how wide it will be? That would help the passing if it is relatively wide, I would think.

[Omega99]

I sure hope I can catch a break in work to go to the race. The more I look at the track, the more excited I get about it.

[macdaddy]

"Padre" seems to have stumbled upon old news...

This track layout is identical to the one we discussed in January/early-Feb. There have been no changes made.

Here's an aerial photo that I found on the net, and superimposed the layout onto it. This was posted on Feb1.

There's not much room for change, given the fact that they plan on leaving one runway open and only use the NE quadrant of the airport for the race.

[luke]

The circuit seems alot smaller than what I first thought it was.

[Purist]

It's 1.96-miles to the lap, so not really short, but not quite as long as Cleveland.

[paul-collins]

Looks like an airport layout of Donnington!

[Baritone2400]

IT does look a little small should be a great race, i allready have my tape ready to record

[Mantom]

I still say they should flip-flop pit road with the front straight to form a long front stretch. Otherwise there's nowhere for the cars to really stretch their legs and faster cars to show their speed.

[extreme]

Are you insane.. Where in motorsports is there a straightaway that is as long a an airport runway. With the possible exception of le mans. Just remember that 2/3 of a runway is a long way. this track might look small but its still on an airport that can support some pretty big planes. I wouldnt worry too much about the track it will be a fine venue..

Ken

[macdaddy]

That "backstraight" is longer than it would appear in the picture. The cars should be able to stretch out their legs, (and test the brakes) quite well.

[Omega99]

The airport used to take 737's until the city put up some noise regulations and such limiting the size of planes going to the municipal airport. It'll be fast.

[Mantom]

Originally Posted by extreme

Are you insane.. Where in motorsports is there a straightaway that is as long a an airport runway. With the possible exception of le mans. Just remember that 2/3 of a runway is a long way. this track might look small but its still on an airport that can support some pretty big planes. I wouldnt worry too much about the track it will be a fine venue..

Ken

Ever hear of Long Beach? Road America? How about Toronto? Vancouver? They all have loooong straights (curved a bit). It's the contrast between slow and fast sections of the course that open up the race. And yes, I know how long a runway is as I used to work at O'Hare as a summer job servicing planes during my college years. flip-flopping the front stretch with pit-road at Edmonton would make a front stretch almost as long as Long Beach. So don't tell me it's too long.

[rustyfan]

I'm looking forward to this one as it's rather refreshing to get a second airport-circuit added to the schedule. Obviously it's hard to tell how good the racing will be, but I'm optimistic.

The only minor concern I have is how far back the stands will be at turn 1, but I'm confident they will have a big enough margin to avoid having an out-of-control car come close to it.

[paul-collins]

Originally Posted by extreme

Are you insane.. Where in motorsports is there a straightaway that is as long a an airport runway. With the possible exception of le mans.

Ummm, Sebring?

[Purist]

Extreme, you're obviously not particularly familiar with the relative lengths of a number of road courses and their straightaways.

To give you the ultimate current closed-circuit example I can think of, the straight on the Nurburgring Norschleife that leads to the pits is in the neighborhood of 4km (2.5-miles), and it has no chicanes. The touring cars reach something like 220mph there. Le Mans has four mile-long "straights". Mexico City, Road America, VIR, Road Atlanta, Mosport, Spa, Bathurst, etc. each have a "straight" of around a mile in length (4,000+ feet).

I think it could improve things to switch the start/finish straiht and pit road at Edmonton, but let's see how it goes. BTW, 737s are not that large as far as airliners go.

[icemachine]

Edmonton City Centre Runways are 5868 and 5700 feet long. Judging by the photos I'd guess the straight on the infield taxiway to be 2700 feet or so. If they flopped the pits I don't think you'd get more than 3000 feet anyhow.

[extreme]

So you guys are... over a race track that is in the middle of a city that has a straight that is approximatelly 3000 ft long by icemachine's estimate. Is that not long enough. I've seent the track that they are going to be racing as it is very similar to the on the they used to race the cascar's on in the late 90's. It is an excellent track and all are going to enjoy it. The pits could be moved and the corners could be eliminated but that would also eliminate passing oppertunities, and isnt every one complaining about there being not enought passing oppertunities.

[Mantom]

Originally Posted by extreme

So you guys are... over a race track that is in the middle of a city that has a straight that is approximatelly 3000 ft long by icemachine's estimate. Is that not long enough. I've seent the track that they are going to be racing as it is very similar to the on the they used to race the cascar's on in the late 90's. It is an excellent track and all are going to enjoy it. The pits could be moved and the corners could be eliminated but that would also eliminate passing oppertunities, and isnt every one complaining about there being not enought passing oppertunities.

The runway may be 3,000 feet, but the Champ Cars are only using a portion of it, and even that has a chicane in the middle of it thereby wiping out passing opportunities. That is why I suggest pit road and the front stretch get flip-flopped to form a longer front straight.

Champ cars need distance to build up an advantage to make a pass, especially since the cars are so even in performance. Coming out of turn 12, the window to perform a pass opens up right about the same time they hit turn 13 - which effectively closes the door. The next opportunity is heading into turn 1, but as we all know from Cleveland, nobody passes there without taking somebody else out in the process. Even if a pass is executed, it's lost again before the next turn due to the different race lines and loss of momentum from the hairpin radius.

The best option as I see it would be to flip-flop pit road and the front stretch between turns 13 and 1 so a longer front stretch is available to draft and make passes before turn 1, or outbraking going into turn 1. With the longer frontstretch, turn 1's radius won't be so acute which will put the cars on similar race lines so passes are more permanent going into 2. Plus, the stretch between 1 and 2 would be lengthened allowing cars to maintain some of their momentum coming out of 1 to set up another passing opportunity by late braking going into 2. The only other place I can see realistic passing opportunities is the stretch between 9 and 10 with a possible setup for turn 11. Finally, having the extra long front straight would force teams to focus more on the car's aero setup to account for the higher speeds. An ill-handling car will fall back in the pack much sooner from greater disadvantage.

[icemachine]

Just a couple points to hopefully clarify things.

The straight I estimate to be 2700 feet would be from turns 9-10. The runaway that the front straight is on is a total of 5700 feet with the track using about 3000 of it. I would judge the straights from turns 12-13 and 14-1 to be 1200 and 1800 feet respectively. It is a little easier to judge this by looking at the aerial photos. The perspective makes this difficult to judge but its better than the illustration which shows a front straight longer than the infield straight.

Also if you flipped the pit road it would mean installing bridges over the track in order to accomadate pit/paddock walkthroughs. It would also mean drivers exiting the pits would be making a hard right hander into hard accelerating traffic.

[Purist]

Considering the width, I don't know that the drivers would even worry about going all the way to the inside for that kink after the first turn. The cars would be exiting the pits on the inside, and that turn (the first turn on the current layout) has a sizeable radius when you consider its width, so I'm not so sure that having the cars exit there would be such a problem.

A disassembleable walkover bridge installed just ater those turns would solve that problem, since I assume it would be taken down after the event to allow normal airport operations to resume.

[Mantom]

The straight I estimate to be 2700 feet would be from turns 9-10. The runaway that the front straight is on is a total of 5700 feet with the track using about 3000 of it. I would judge the straights from turns 12-13 and 14-1 to be 1200 and 1800 feet respectively. It is a little easier to judge this by looking at the aerial photos. The perspective makes this difficult to judge but its better than the illustration which shows a front straight longer than the infield straight.

Exactly, straights not long enough. The chicane appears right where passing would begin if it were one long straight.

Also if you flipped the pit road it would mean installing bridges over the track in order to accomadate pit/paddock walkthroughs. It would also mean drivers exiting the pits would be making a hard right hander into hard accelerating traffic.

The racing line would be on the outside of the stretch between 1 and 2 as drivers are going to want to maintain momentum built off the front stretch. Cars coming off pit road would be on the inside and wouldn't merge with traffic until the braking zone approaching turn 2 - much safer than the T-boning entrance that cars have done at Cleveland the past few years and would need to repeat at the current Edmonton configuration.

I don't think installing bridges are that big a deal. Most airports have stairtrucks and other equipment for exactly that purpose. Besides, tracks look better with a bridge or two.